


colliding codes

by jadeharley (faeringenfir)



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Because I can, Explicit Language, F/F, F/M, Humanstuck, Karkat Swearing, M/M, No Spoilers, Non-Binary Nepeta Leijon, Non-Binary Sollux Captor, Non-binary character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Recreational Drug Use, Trans Aradia Megido, Trans Male Character, Trans Male Karkat Vantas, Underage Drug Use, no beta we die like men, only rated teen and up so karkat can keep his colorful vocab
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 14:28:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18740935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faeringenfir/pseuds/jadeharley
Summary: Karkat Vantas is an absolute mess. From a complicated family to a lonely school life, his only escape is his photography and online best friend who's real name he doesn't even know. And on top of all this, he has the horrible burden of gender dysphoria and unaccepting parents.Dave Strider seems to have it all. Perfect home life, tons of friends, cisgender and definitely straight. Doesn't have to worry about the people who still call him a girl. He's everything Karkat wishes he could be.In which two completely different worlds discover they're not that different after all.[CROSSPOSTED ON WATTPAD! under username @jadesharley]





	colliding codes

Karkat Vantas is an absolute mess. From a complicated family to a lonely school life, his only escape is his photography and online best friend who's real name he doesn't even know. And on top of all this, he has the horrible burden of gender dysphoria and unaccepting parents.

 

 

 

_Dear Book Who I Refuse To Call A Fucking Diary,_

_Today has been another absolutely shitty fucking day. Started off with Kankri on my ass and ended with a bruise under the eye from fucking Vriska. Life is a chore._

_God, I really need to stop with the melodramatic bullshit._

_Fuck this bullshit, I’m gonna talk to TC._

_Sincerely,_

_Fucking Karkat, Who Else_

He closed the book. Fuck the school guidance counselor, he’s never writing in a fucking diary ever again. It lasted a good week, at the very least.

 

Mondays. Karkat hated Mondays. Understandably so, it was the first day of another excruciatingly long week. And this week had already started out shitty.

 

Karkat decided that he wasn’t gonna take Vriska’s bullshit tomorrow, as he always did before sleeping. Not like, that ever stuck for more than an hour. It’s not easy standing your ground in front of Vriska. She wasn’t a horrible person, but she had a way of making bad things happen to you by pure luck. And she never even fucking means it. That makes it even worse. The only genuinely bad thing Karkat can find from her is her lies and the fact that she still calls him by his dead name. Which is not a lot, compared to other people at his high school.

 

Fuck this. He’s done wallowing in self-pity.

 

carcinoGeneticist began trolling terminallyCapricious

 

CG: TC GET YOUR LAZY ASS ONLINE I NEED SOMEONE TO RANT TO

TC: hEy My MoThErFuCkInG bEsT fRiEnD

CG: HI TC

TC: wHaTs Up ToDaY?

CG: FUCKING

CG: 88

TC: oH nO

CG: SHE SOMEHOW FOUND A WAY TO INDIRECTLY GIVE ME A BLACK EYE TODAY

CG: I’M SO FUCKING PISSED OFF

CG: SHE SHOULD’VE GOTTEN IN TROUBLE FOR THAT

TC: oH fUuUuUuCkKkKk

TC: tHaT mOtHeRfUcKiNg SuCkS

CG: I KNOW

CG: SHE’S BEEN SO MUCH FUCKING WORSE LATELY

CG: GOD I WISH I COULD BE WITH YOU

TC: i WiSh ThAt ToO, kArKaT

TC: mAyBe A mIrAcLe WiLl HaPpEn AnD iLl RaNdOmLy ShOw Up At YoUr HoUsE tOnIgHt

CG: OH NOT THIS BULLSHIT AGAIN

CG: ANYWAYS…

CG: WHEN WILL YOU TELL ME YOUR REAL NAME?

TC: sOmE dAy

TC: pRoBaBlY sOoN

CG: I DUNNO

CG: IT JUST FEELS LIKE YOU DON’T TRUST ME

CG: LIKE….

CG: YOU CALL ME YOUR BEST FRIEND AND STUFF BUT I DON’T EVEN GET TO KNOW YOUR REAL NAME

CG: IT REALLY SUCKS, TC

TC: i KnOw It DoEs

TC: i’M jUsT iN a WeIrD pLaCe RiGhT nOw

TC: i’Ll TeLl YoU bY tHe EnD oF tHe MoNtH, i PrOmIsE

CG: OK

CG: I HAVE TO GO NOW

CG: IT’S GETTING WAY TOO LATE

CG: I’LL TALK TO YOU IN THE MORNING.

CG: GOODNIGHT TC

 

carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling terminallyCapricious

 

carcinoGeneticist is offline

 

terminallyCapricious began tolling carcinoGeneticist

 

TC: iTs GaMzEe

TC: mY nAmE, tHaT iS

 

terminallyCapricious ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist

 

terminallyCapricious is offline.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Karkat sighed to himself. _This is absolutely fucking ridiculous._ You can’t just have a crush on your best friend who’s name you don’t know and is already in a relationship. Although, it’s hard to tell if it’s a crush or if you just really enjoy your friendship. It’s always been that way. TC has been in a relationship with AT, the ridiculously annoying cripple that bugs Karkat about TC constantly. TC doesn’t like talking about him. Karkat sometimes thinks that TC doesn’t really love AT.

 

Karkat flopped onto his bed, hurting his back in the process. He groaned and scrunched up his face, reaching back to rub his back. He laid down, staring out the ceiling. _Now would be a great time to dissociate, brain._ Karkat seemed to like dissociating, in the weirdest way. He’d been doing it all his life. He felt as if it could take him away from all his problems. It gave him a feeling of bliss and relief. God, life was hard.

 

Unfortunately for Karkat, he did not dissociate during that moment. In fact, he did the very opposite. He began thinking about all the shitty things about his life. Vriska, his parents, school, his grades, his best friend’s name that he doesn’t know. And then, all the things he’s done wrong in the past two weeks. All the mistakes, accidental bump-ins, stutters, messed up sentences, accidentally reading the due date on his global homework wrong. He wasn’t ready for this week. Who is he kidding, he’s never ready to finish a week.

 

Karkat hopes he dissociates during global tomorrow. He’s not up to learning that shit. He decides thinking is too much, and turns off the light and changes into pajamas, hoping he can fall asleep and forget the pain. But that never works out. He can never fall asleep. Stupid fucking insomnia. He might as well just stay up all night and take pictures out his window. Or maybe sneak out to his favorite picture-taking park and take edgy nighttime photos. Anything other than wallowing in self pity til he falls asleep an hour before he has to wake up.

 

He decides to go out, the park isn’t that far away, and it’s not like he lives in a dangerous neighborhood. Sure, it’s pretty poor, but it’s not gangster or unsafe. Karkat would consider his family lower-middle class, anyways.

 

He got up, changing back into daytime clothes, aka an oversized hoodie and jeans. He grabbed his camera, a gift from Kankri from when he turned fourteen, jumped into his shoes and slowly crept to the front door. His dad, the only light sleeper in the house, was at work, so he didn’t have much to worry about. Plus, he knows how to avoid all the loud spots in the old house. Karkat Vantas is no amateur.

 

He opened the fortunately quiet front door and tip-toed out, locking it behind him, leaving no sign he left except the empty bed in his room. He began the short tread to the preserve a few blocks down. It was closed at night, but he knew how to hop a fence, and there weren’t any guards or cameras. The city didn’t really care about trespassing in the shittiest preserve to exist. It was already filled with druggies, graffiti, and litter, no matter what they did to prevent it. People will always find a way to do bad things, no matter what rules you set.

 

The walk seemed to go by slower than usual. He had one headphone in, blasting the playlist TC made for him, while the other ear was listening for anything suspicious happening around him.

 

He reached the back of the park, where the least amount of crackheads hung out and climbed the fence, jumping off the other side. God, he wished he had some sort of weed right now. He did not want to be sober. Although, when did he ever want to be sober.

 

Karkat walked along the dirt path, made by people walking around for years on end, including himself. He looked around, eyes catching on a tree with twisty, almost magic-looking roots going up it. He smiled, it was perfect. He pulled out his camera, turning it on and looking through the screen. He was glad Kankri got him a digital camera, as traditional ones are ridiculously expensive to develop, and he could edit his pictures as much as he wanted.

 

He snapped a few shots of the tree, changing the focus and zoom each time; he’d find his favorite later. Once he was satisfied, he decided to take a break, maybe wallow a bit before taking more pictures.

 

Karkat found his usual log and sat down, making sure the camera hanging around his neck didn’t get crushed. It wouldn’t seem expensive to most, but it was all he could afford and was practically his prized possession. He would probably cry for weeks if that camera broke.

 

He sat for a solid ten minutes, contemplating existence and staring at the darkened scenery. The preserve was calming at night, if you weren’t thinking about the crackheads that could attack you at any moment. He sighed, Karkat was never one to purposely put himself in danger, but when it came to photography, he didn’t care what happened as long as he got a good shot. And he was pretty damn good at what he did. Even if he was in a panic, he could still take a nice picture, shaky or not.

 

Now this is when Karkat’s night went to shit. When a certain annoying blond boy who Karkat despised sat down on a log across from him.

 

“Hey Vantas, funny seeing you here.” Dave motherfucking Strider said in that sly, teasing voice that always affected Karkat’s stomach.

 

Karkat did NOT have a crush on David Strider, biggest asshole to exist, in his opinion. He just had such a strong hatred that he got butterflies whenever Dave looked at him; or so he claims.

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Karkat snapped. He was not up for Dave’s bullshit.

 

“I could ask you the same. It’s pretty late for a nice girl like you to be out.” Ouch.

 

“I’m not a girl.” Karkat snarled.

 

“Oh fuck, I forgot. Sorry, dude, won’t joke about that shit again. I didn’t mean it that way.” Dave seemed panicked as he rambled an apology,

 

Karkat internally smiled. Dave thought of him as a dude. The most cishet person at his highschool was probably the only person besides his three friends to see him as a male.

 

“Thank you.” Karkat muttered.

 

“What?” He sounded astonished. “What for? I just fucked up big time.”

 

“Thank you for thinking of me as a guy to joke around with about that stuff. Nobody at Valley Stream sees me as a guy.” Karkat replies, voice as low as it’s ever been before.

 

“Oh. I’m not a scumbag. If you say you’re a guy, you’re a guy, dick or not,” He smirked, “In fact, I’ve dealt with something similar, myself.”

 

“What do you mean?” Karkat was confused and intrigued, he honestly knew nothing about this stupid asshole.

 

“Oh, it’s nothing. Pretend I never said that. Nothing out of me. Mister Zuipperpips, as my crazy step-sister would say.”

 

“Rose or Roxy?”

 

“Roxy. Definitely Roxy. Rose would never. She’s too stuck up for typos.” Dave smirked. He enjoyed making fun of his siblings.

 

As enjoyable as that conversation was, Karkat was sick of human interaction for the night. He was ready to go to 7-Eleven, get a Monster and some cookies and stay up reading until sunrise. Maybe upload and edit his pictures, but most likely reading.

 

“I have to go. Enjoy your pot, which you’re obviously her to smoke. Don’t burn down the fucking forest.” Karkat said.

 

He began walking away, putting his camera around his neck and putting in his headphone, prepared to play more of Gamzee’s music.

 

“Karkat, wait!” He turned around, looking at Dave, almost desperately trying to get him to turn around.

 

“What?”

 

“I’m sorry that people do that to you. I don’t know if it’ll make much a difference, but I’ll talk to my friends about it. If everyone ever threatens you or anything… let me know and I’ll beat them up. Here’s my chumhandle.” He hands Karkat a piece of paper with the words ‘ _turntechGodhead’_ written in barely eligible handwriting.

 

“Thanks, Strider.” Karkat turned and walked away, trying not to think about Dave’s slight pout when he turned away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

carcinoGeneticist began trolling turntechGodhead

 

CG: JUST SO YOU KNOW

CG: I DON’T NEED YOU TO FUCKING DEFEND ME

 

carcinoGeneticist ceased trolling turntechGodhead

 

carcinoGeneticist is now offline


End file.
